RCN seeks to hold ‘champions’ to their pledge

The commitment means that half the new Assembly has signed up to support the idea of pay equality, which has been estimated will cost the States an extra £50m. per year.

The list of names includes key players who are likely to take leading roles in the new Assembly, such as Peter Ferbrache, Andrea Dudley-Owen and Heidi Soulsby.

Big-hitters who are not on the list include Gavin St Pier, Mark Helyar and Lyndon Trott.

RCN convenor Kenny Lloyd was optimistic that the dispute would be resolved.

‘It looks good that we seem to have a fair bit of support among the elected deputies.

‘It’s our intention quite soon to make contact with those nursing champions and see how we can work together to ensure that we have a robust and well-staffed nursing workforce.

‘We’re looking forward to engaging with nurse champions, and of course other successful deputies. We want to congratulate them all and let’s hope that we can all get round the table and talk and sort things out that way.’

The pledge which the 20 have signed is a promise to address nursing workforce shortages, invest in nursing education and professional development, and improve working conditions and pay.

As soon as the new Assembly gets the names on the doors, Mr Lloyd said they were ready to get back round the table.

‘We had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with civil service representatives to try and get some dates in the diary quite soon after the deputies get onto the various committees, so we’re hopeful that we’ll have a meeting before the end of the month with the new Policy & Resources to try to pick up where we were before.

‘We did seem to be in quite a positive place before Covid came along, and it coincided with the nurses voting to go on strike, but obviously that was put aside because of Covid and the talks were also put aside.’

A timescale of 2027 has been set for the principle of equal pay for work of equal value to become law in Guernsey, and the RCN does not want that date slipping.

The price tag of £50m. was dropped into a States debate before the election by Deputy Lyndon Trott, the vice-president of P&R.

Mr Lloyd said the RCN would like to see the report which came up with that figure.

‘We’re unclear what that is for, whether that is to address pay and equality across the States of Guernsey. It certainly isn’t a figure that we would recognise as being about nurses. Also there was a sitting deputy at one of the hustings who believed that the figure was nearer £40m., and another £10m. had been added on just to round it up.

‘The report, which I would imagine maybe provides the information, hasn’t been published, we’ve only been given a small part of the report.’